I Am The Local Atheist (11 page)

“
Thanks.” I took a bite finding that the sauce was enough to
allow me to ignore the other flavour, while the charcoal itself
gave the hotdog a certain ‘crunch’ factor that you don’t usually
get from sausages. I crunched my way through the rest of
it.

Lucas put his
hands on his hips. “Don’t you love being out in the sun, having
fun, helping people?”

I used to.
My bedroom had become a
shadow trap. Weeks on end were spent with the curtains closed and
the only light being emitted coming from the computer screen as I
stared directly into it completely oblivious to what was happening
in the world outside. “Yip,” I said as I wiped my mouth with a
serviette. “Can’t beat the sunshine. Unless, of course, you have
the powers of a 75
^th
level Sorcerer at your disposal!”

A voice I recognised popped in beside me. “David, you can
barely make it up to a 75
^th
level of
anything.”

I looked
around and saw Martin staring down at me with a plate in his hand.
I eyed him suspiciously. “Smell the food from your classrooms?”

“
Too lazy to grind?”

“
I don’t consider grinding for the sake of levelling up
particularly good game design.”

“
I don’t consider judging me on how I get food to mouth
particularly good Samaritan behaviour.”

I decided
against replying to that.

He put out his
plate towards Lucas. “Howzit?”

Lucas put a
piece of bread down and a sausage well-done on top. “Sauce?”

Martin looked
at the burnt meal on his plate with some derision. “Ummm, yeah,
sure.” He turned back to me. “And anyway, someone smelt something.
When word got around, it was exit city. That place is a steaming
bag of shit-storm that’s brewing in the corridors at the moment.
Everyone wants out!”

“
Why, what’s up?” I asked.

“
Dude, there’s this chick on the Arts course that had an
exhibition a week ago, and apparently it was so controversial that
the church she was attacking wants to have her or the Polytech up
for defamation. I don’t know which one, don’t really care, but
apparently management are scared shitless about
lawsuits.”

Lucas dropped
his tongs. “What?” They clattered against the barbeque before
bouncing onto the ground.

“
That’s crazy.” I said.

“
Well fuck, whatever is happening, I can tell you that
management is not happy about the whole thing. Apparently they’re
under pressure to fire her tutor for allowing the exhibition of
those paintings to go ahead. But the tutor had no idea what the
paintings were actually about, only that they were worthy of an
exhibition.”

“
Huh,” I said, thoughtful of the idea that other people were
oblivious to certain events that had happened in town.

Lucas picked
up the tongs and carelessly wiped them on his apron. “What were the
paintings about?” He was looking at me.

Martin raised
his eyebrows.

“
Oh, I was at the exhibition,” I explained.

“
And you didn’t tell me about it.” He clicked his fingers.
“Damnit! I knew there was a free meal I had missed out on
recently.”

I shrugged my
shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t get art at the best of
times.”

Martin blinked
suddenly. “Dude, whenever we talk about games, your first comment
is almost always how fuckin aesthetically pleasing the bloody
artwork is. Like I give a shit.” He turned to Lucas. “We got a
genuine art critic in the flat with us.”

Lucas waved
his tongs like a wand. “Y’ know, I have noticed this guy’s
attention to detail on occasion.”

“
Should be doing an art-appreciation course or
something.”

“
They have those?”

“
Well, we’ll just call it the journalism course shall
we?”

Lucas raised
his eyebrows in consideration. “Art History?”

“
Sure. Whatever.”

“
Anyway,” I said, keen to get them away from me as a topic,
“how did you find out about it? And what’s the big deal
anyway?”

Martin was
fondling his hotdog not really sure if his student hunger could
overcome the charcoaled crispiness. “Umm, design and art always
crosses over, especially now that the polytech offers some
introductory courses to game design and programming. And anyways,
news travels fast in that building, especially when there’s
computers at your finger tips.”

“
True,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here
now.”

He winked at
me, “Perks of being a student,” and took a bite of his hot dog.
“Good sense of smell too!”

Lucas went
back to toiling with his flame-burnt sausages, somewhat agitated
and much less enthusiastic than before. “It pisses me off. Of all
the people who end up getting offended by shit, it’s bloody
institutions and management. Anyone with a core belief that needs
to be protected.”

Martin was
still chewing on the charcoal. “And funding – to answer your other
question, David. The polytech relies heavily on outside funding and
if that goes down the tube, jobs and education go down the tube.
It’s bureaucracy, dude. Politics and people. Or in this case,
politics and art.” Martin shrugged as he downed the last morsel of
sausage, bread and sauce, said that he’d catch up later and waltzed
back to some classmates. Lucas seemed downcast for a while,
occasionally shaking his head in frustration, but by the time the
sausage sizzle had ended, and he had insisted that we help The
Salvation Army pack up, he was back to his sunny self again.

Part V

–
Zombie swatter
–

It seemed like
Lucas was on some kind of helping bender. He even asked to help
sort everything that had been donated, and then take it all to the
Family Store. I thought he was crazy, but he was seriously enjoying
helping. I could barely believe it.

For most of
that week I came and went, not really doing much, but helping out
here and there with Lucas. Wednesday afternoon I had walked into
town from the flat around three o’clock as Lucas was finishing off
the last of his jobs at the Family Store. We went back to the foyer
of the main building and hung around like vagrants off the street
without anything else to do.

I got up and
looked through some of the leaflets that they had set up on a wall.
There were a few overseas volunteer work, helping to build new
homes and such in poor countries type leaflets as well as some
newsletters and youth programme ones. I was about to pick up the
youth programme leaflet when my attention wandered over to a simple
white and red one titled ‘The Salvation Army Bridge’. I had never
heard of it before. I looked over at Lucas but he was slouched
across the couch with his head hanging off the sofa arm, eyes
closed and his mouth on the verge of sucking in a fly that was
hovering around him. The leaflet made it into my fingers and was
gently pulled out of the clear plastic socket it sat in.

Christie walked out of her office looking like a zombie – arms
hanging low, head slung back and mouth open in an exaggerated moan.
I wondered if Lucas was eventually going to rise from his slumber
looking like this. I also wondered if I had suddenly stepped into a
scene from
Resident
Evil
.

“
Why David? Why?”

“
What?”

She raised her
hands. “What is so hard about getting an extension lead, installing
it in the server, feeding it through a couple of walls and then
connecting it to my computer?”

“
Ummm…”

“
Exactly! Useless!” She looked down at the leaflet in my hand.
“Everything okay?”

“
Yeah, sure. Just never heard of this Bridge thing
before.”

“
Oh. It’s for people with substance abuse problems. They work
with clients to bring about a new attitude to how they approach
life. They work with families as well as single people, but it’s
all designed to try to encourage the client to approach their
entire life with a different attitude, one that obviously doesn’t
rely on alcohol and drugs.”

“
Right. Basically the AA?”

“
Yeah, but designed on trying to create a stronger focus on the
family as a means of helping to beat the abuse. It’s not just about
going straight, because so many family problems are caused by
substance abuse, but about working with the client to improve
family relationships while
being
straight.”

I nodded my
head and put the leaflet back where I found it.

“
You can keep it if you like. They’re free.”

“
No I’m okay.” I coughed feeling awkward.

Alice walked
out of her office and said “I need to go over to the men’s hostel
to sort some of their stuff and decide whether or not any of it
should go to the Family Store. Would you like to come along, since
you haven’t been there yet?”

“
Oooh, yes please!” Christie clasped her hands together. “Can
David come along as well? Please?”

She hadn’t
even asked me if I wanted to come.

Alice looked
at me with an understanding grin. “Sure.”

I didn’t
understand anything. It was like a completely silent conversation
had passed between them so quickly that it had passed right over my
head without me even knowing.

We all looked
over to the guy slouched all over the couch. The fly couldn’t make
up its mind where to land on him.

“
Should we wake this guy or leave him here?”

The fly
finally decided to land on his nose. Lucas shook his head
violently, arms sprung upwards as his body lurched forward. He sat
up and looked at us.

“
Well,” said Alice. “I guess God wants Lucas to come with
us.”

“
What?”

I was finding
that I didn’t like Alice much. She seemed nice, but I always got
the feeling that she was hiding something, some acquired knowledge
that amused her. Christie had that laidback nature about her, ready
to make a joke of anything, but Alice, even though she often looked
for a good sarcastic reply, seemed to be looking more to confirm
her own suspicions about the world. It was annoying. Even more so
when that look was turned towards me.

The men’s
hostel was an old villa that had been purposely built to contain
large numbers, almost like one of those old psychiatric wards you
see in movies set in the 1940s: crumbling wallpaper, mould growing
around the door frames, and dark and dingy corners where patients
obsessed with the night hang out on a consistent basis demanding
their food and meds be brought to them for fear that light might
singe them into oblivion if they took two steps closer to the rays
reflecting through the windows.

Alice said The Salvation Army struggled to find funding to do
even minimal repairs on it – “the budget is
that
tight” – so lots of volunteer
work was sought from the community.

She jokingly
clicked her fingers at me. “So feel free to volunteer any time you
like.”

I pointed my
finger at Lucas. “I think he’s the expert at volunteering around
here.”

Alice laughed
as she went down to the basement with the supervisor while one of
the daytime caregivers gave Lucas, Christie and I a guided
tour.

The Caregiver
stopped at the banister before taking us upstairs. She noted that
the hostel was meant to be a home for these men, not an institute
or psych ward. “Most of the men and young men are only passing
through, either on bail or just have nowhere else to go; some are
here because they have mental conditions and need to be looked
after. We try our best to encourage the capable men to learn how to
take care of themselves and to work towards leaving so that they
can get back on their own two feet again. Some of these younger
guys can’t stand the curfew rules, but we always say, ‘well, if you
don’t want to live by these rules then move out and live on your
own’.”

Christie
nodded her head enthusiastically – maybe she had a better
understanding of this place than I did, so I asked “Doesn’t that
mean that they could just end up going back to their old ways?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders. “We’re not here to baby-sit.
We
are
here to
look after them though. When people need a place for the night –
we’re here; when people need a place to start over from again
without falling into old habits – we’re here. It’s not important
what state they are in, what is important is that we have a
facility to care for them when they need it the most.”

A grizzly old man wrapped up in a fluffy bathrobe made his way
down the stairs, somewhat cautiously, perhaps with suspicion, but
definitely oozing derision directly at the caregiver. “I’ll
believe
that
when
I see it,” he hissed. “You don’t even fuckin’ care about us, y’
fuckin …”

“
Samuel,” the Caregiver warned, “if you speak again like that
today, you know that you are not going to be getting any dinner
tonight. How about being polite while we have guests
here?”

He brushed
past us, his slow walk synced with low mumbling. I’m pretty sure it
contained more swearing, but I guessed that he had learnt to keep
quiet just enough so he could still get dinner.

“
Men like Samuel, well, we still love despite their
idiosyncrasies. We know there’s a heart of gold – somewhere –
underneath all that bitterness.” The Caregiver smiled. “But in the
end, we can only do so much. The rest of these guys, well, some
learn after being in prison even for just a short time that they
never want to go back and they’re the ones who make the effort;
others, well, they might be here for a short time but as soon as
they leave they’re back to their old ways. Guys like that we can’t
do anything for – they never learn their lesson. A couple have been
blacklisted…”